Should we be concerned who the next governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will be? This query assumes that we will go with tradition and not re-appoint the incumbent. The latter has got until June next year before his current term ends. And arguably, he, more than any other central bank governor in this country, has drawn a [...]

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A concerned reader of my blog recently sent me an article which he requested that I reproduce with an urgent message for three-time Nigerian presidential aspirant and former head of state Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd). This message was meant to coincide with the General's 70th birthday in December 2012. The person pleaded anonymity emphasising he only wants his important message [...]

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The Yoruba, like every group in Nigeria, has produced some of the most cerebral and visionary people the world has seen, and also some of the most bestial buffoons. Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the first premier of the Western region, a top ranked manager of men and resources and the first advocate of free education in Nigeria, represented the former while [...]

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Nigeria has long held the enviable status of being the most populous country in Africa and most populous black country on earth, with 166 million people. In addition to the Nigerians living in Nigeria, the numbers of Nigerians abroad go into a few tens of millions. To put this in perspective, 1 out of every 4 black people in the [...]

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I am fully invested in the Abraham Lincoln legend as sold to the world by Americans. I trust the system that scrutinises the past with obsessive scholarship and has settled on the conclusion that the man was perhaps America's greatest ever President. And it was all so very unlikely. In 1860 after Lincoln had been nominated as the Presidential nominee [...]

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Decades ago, oil replaced agriculture as the goose that lays the revenue, thereby ending the relationship between farmers and government. Farmers have remained in rural areas, mainly operating, in smallholding units, a labour-intensive, inputs-deprived and loss-making agriculture that also suffers from value chains poverty. Government has stayed in urban seats of power handing out essential input subsidies its officials take [...]

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Forty years ago today, in the district of Colombia, the American Supreme Court passed a law that guarantees the right of American women to legal medical abortion. Roe V. Wade made access to sexual reproductive health a right that cannot be denied for American women. Since then, the conservative faction of that government has been looking for ways of denying [...]

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Again, the Central Bank of Nigeria's (CBN) rate-setting committee (the Monetary Policy Committee ― MPC) meets this morning. In a marked departure from practice, the meeting this January (the MPC meets every other month) is scheduled to run for just one day (all through last year, the meetings lasted the better part of two days). In addition, the press conference [...]

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One of the most important issues in the ongoing constitution review process that will be concluded this year is the fate of local government councils in Nigeria. Even though local governments have always been defined as the third tier of government, the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) did not explicitly state so. An examination of [...]

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A disproportionately large part of the National Assembly's resources was taken up last year with members attempts at altering the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Act 2007. As befits a pillar of our struggling democracy, parliament couched its efforts down this path in terms of the need to increase the apex bank's accountability to the polity. Yet, suspicion mounted that [...]

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